Last night, we had a pipe burst in our house and water completely saturated the entire first floor. Nevertheless, sitting there and listening to the damages caused by the pipe burst for 20-30 minutes clearly got to much for me.
Even before that, when I first heard the news, I started to have thoughts of the worst:
“Is the house a loss?”
“Are we going to live somewhere else?”
“Are all my possessions okay?”
Those were the thoughts racing through my mind and eventually those thoughts caught up with me and I broke down in a panic attack/sensory overload that last for a good hour last night. In fact, as I write this blog, I am still feeling some of the effects of the panic attack.
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But this got me thinking about what kind of levels we experience panic attacks, if we have any at all.
Think of the levels of a panic attack/sensory overload as something of like the Fujita scale.
F0 is barely a panic attack
F1 is what I had in January and when I was leaving Marco Island, FL in 2017.
F2 is what I had last night and in February 2021 as well as the death of my paternal grandmother in 2019.
F3 I had 4 years ago at Panera Bread and three years ago when I was visiting one of my uncles who lived in Venice, FL
F4 was after the deaths of my maternal grandmother in 2009 and my paternal grandfather in 2011,
F5 I have not had as of this blog. If I did have an F5, I would be ending up in the hospital.
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If you are reading this blog, I am sure you very well aware that panic attacks can happen anytime and anywhere. They dictate when to strike at you and what level you get them at. For me, panic attacks are mostly based on how much workload I take on as a self-advocate and public speaker.
One of my biggest passions of course is traveling to in person events and speaking at them. However, the ones I was looking to speak at were at comic cons. Not to say that they are bad because after all, I did attend 15 Brony conventions across the country for 6 years.
But now, I am at the point where I have to start treating my travels and in person activities as part of “Going the Distance” and that includes focusing on events and public appearances targeted towards my audience, which is clearly not at Brony and Comic Cons.
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Part of the problem that causes me to get panic attacks is the fact that I am also a people pleaser and I sometimes don’t take time for myself. I get so hyperfocused on things that I don’t even realize that I am putting myself at risk for a panic attack to begin with. Stacking my workload, taking on more than I can chew was more enough to take me out of commission mentally.
Of course, I have to be reminded that I always have an obligation to myself just as much as an obligation to others, even though it may be hard for me to understand. Usually, these conversations go something like this:
In a way, it’s more about the old saying “the bigger they are, the harder they fall.” And if you want a visual representation of what that means, watch this classic cartoon from the 1930’s called “Greedy Humpty Dumpty.”
Just like in the cartoon, our desires to grow and grow too much can result in us falling harder and putting us in the F3-F5 level of panic attacks. The important thing is to remember what your “whys” are and just focus on what your target is. Do that, and your panic attack risk will go down to F0.
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Catch you all later!!
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